The Last Hunter: Collected Edition (Antarktos Saga #1-5)

I dream of home. Of the house I grew up in. I’m in the front yard. Small details leap out at me. The tall tree that arcs over the street is heavy with the red buds of early spring. Its thick bark peels off in great chunks, perfect for building action figure forts. A slab of sidewalk is lifted up by the tree’s roots, perfect for jumping bikes. The puddles in the driveway are the same familiar oblong shapes, filled by a recent rainstorm and full of wriggling worms drawn out by the moisture. After the puddle evaporates, they’ll die and dry out—food for the ants.

I breathe deeply and catch several distinct scents: salty ocean air, the residue of the red berries growing on the evergreen shrubs, melted crayons and cut grass. I’m sitting on the stairs to the front door. There are eight of them. Chipping black paint curls up from the cast iron railings. I peel off a flake and snap it between my fingers until all that remains is dust.

Everything about this place feels familiar.

Safe.

I’m suddenly gripped by sadness, as deep and profound as any I have felt.

My old friend is dead. The thought pulls tears from my eyes and as the saline slides down my cheeks, a snowflake drifts down and settles on my knee. It’s joined by a second. And a third. And now the sky is full of white. A blizzard.

My first blizzard was in nineteen seventy-eight. I was four, but I remember watching the storm in amazement, my breath fogging the windows as the snow slowly grew taller than me and then taller than my father. This storm is worse. In minutes, I’m buried up to my waist. The neighborhood around me is reduced to a solid sheet of white, as though erased from the page.

My old friend is dead, I think again.

The cold shakes my body, just a shiver at first, but then violently.

I don’t want to leave!

I want to be home!

I want this life!

“Solomon,” Kainda says, shaking me awake.

I blink my eyes, focusing on her face, and for a moment, I’m not happy to see her. The faint memory of ocean air is destroyed by the strong scent of Nephilim blood. I remember my childhood home perfectly. But at times, it is a curse. My dreams can recreate the past so realistically that I feel like I’ve just been there. The memory of that place clutches my heart. Tears, real this time, drip down my cheeks.

“Solomon,” Kainda says with uncommon softness. “What’s wrong? Who died?”

“W—what?” I ask. Did the others somehow experience my dream?

“You spoke of someone dying. An old friend.”

I don’t feel like explaining. “Just a dream,” I say, wiping away the tears with my bare arm. “Wasn’t even a person.”

With the last pangs of regret fading along with the dream, I sit up. Em and Kat aren’t far away. They’re helping Wright get to his feet. Kainda offers me her hand. I take it and stand.

“What happened?” Wright says, rubbing his head. “Feels like I got hit with a hammer.”

“Me, too,” Kat says.

I can tell by Em’s squinted eyes that she feels the same, though she’d never admit it, at least not in front of other hunters. Kainda probably has a headache, too, but she’s so stubborn and tough that she’s managed to erase any sign of pain.

“How about you?” Kainda asks me. “Is your head—”

I smile at her continued concern.

“What?” she says defensively.

My smile widens.

She grunts and says, “Shut-up.”

“My head is fine, by the way,” I say before stretching. “Slept like a baby.”

Kainda eyes me and with all humor gone from her voice, and asks, “What happened?”

The others hear the question and come closer. They’d all like to know.

“Hades,” I say. All of them tense at the name.

“He was here?” Em asks.

I nod. “Put the four of you to sleep with that purple powder.”

“The four of us,” Wright says. “What about you? You were sleeping, too.”

“Oh, I was just tired,” I say. Four sets of glaring eyes tell me I need to elaborate on that statement, and fast. I point to the next room, which is now full of drying Nephilim blood. “I was in there.”

Kainda is the first to realize the implications of the plasma-coated ceiling, floor and walls. “In there? How?”

“Like this,” I say. Their faces, when they turn around and see me hovering a few feet above the floor, are priceless. What I wouldn’t give for Mira’s Polaroid camera right now.

“You...can fly,” Kat says, sounding dubious.

“I didn’t know, either,” I confess. “But I didn’t have much of a choice. It just kind of happened.”

Kainda stays on task, nonplussed by my new ability. “But you spoke to Hades.”